This is backwards. It’s confusing because the article has two statement related to value.

The value of the company went up in the first half of the year (so the notes held by lenders go up, and company books as loss)

Separately, the article reports on the expected hopeful IPO value from investors, and that went down. That’s more forward looking.

They do a raise and give an investor 10% of the company (or more accurately a claim), the company receives 10 billion dollars (valuing the company at 100 billion)

A year later the company is worth 1 trillion dollars. That investor’s claim is now worth 100 billion dollars. And then the 90 billion is booked as a liability and so a loss. If they IPO, that 10% gets converted to shares. The liability is gone.

Good for the investor. The startup needed the cash, so good for them. I’m sure they aren’t crying that their company is valued at a trillion dollars.

Should it be worth that much? That’s different.

As a selling point that they can deliver incredible ROI?

It’s not as important as you might think. Counter intuitively it’s tied to success as a risky start up. Or arguably they should have got better terms during one of their raises - but hindsight and all that.

For the record I wouldn’t by them for 1.5 trillion dollars.

It’s not 72 billion dollars lost related to the business.

The money didn’t exist and wasn’t spent.

It’s not clear what the instrument was exactly (I would need to look it up myself, not an accountant). But there are a range of charges that aren’t actually related to profitability of a business. Value of instruments could be tied to a capital raise earlier. EG if they promised a percent of the company as part of a raise, and Anthropic is worth a lot more now. Their liability increases (the percent they owe is worth more now) and they book as a loss.

72 billion was a paper loss. 8 billion loss is still a lot though!

A large portion of depreciation and insurance is fixed, not based on actually driving. And maintenance is lower with EVs as well.

Still though, you are right, 1/9 is specific to fuel, and it’s deceiving. If it.were truly 1/9 we wouldn’t be having this conversation because all vehicles would be EVs.